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It would have been a “mistake” if Hillary Clinton had pushed the “aye” button when she meant to push the “nay” button. In fact, her decision—by her own admission—was quite conscious.

Former senator and secretary of state Hillary Clinton is the only candidate for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination who supported the invasion of Iraq.

That war not only resulted in 4,500 American soldiers being killed and thousands more permanently disabled, but also hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths, the destabilization of the region with the rise of the Islamic State and other extremists, and a dramatic increase in the federal deficit, resulting in major cutbacks to important social programs. Moreover, the primary reasons Clinton gave for supporting President George W. Bush’s request for authorizing that illegal and unnecessary war have long been proven false.

As a result, many Democratic voters are questioning — despite her years of foreign policy experience—whether Clinton has the judgment and integrity to lead the United States on the world stage. It was just such concerns that resulted in her losing the 2008 nomination to then-Senator Barack Obama, an outspoken Iraq War opponent.

This time around, Clinton supporters have been hoping that enough Democratic voters—the overwhelming majority of whom opposed the war—will forget about her strong endorsement of the Bush administration’s most disastrous foreign policy. Failing that, they’ve come up with a number of excuses to justify her October 2002 vote for the authorization of military force.

At the time of vote, Saddam Hussein had already agreed in principle to a return of the weapons inspectors. His government was negotiating with the United Nations Monitoring and Verification Commission on the details, which were formally institutionalized a few weeks later. (Indeed, it would have been resolved earlier had the United States not repeatedly postponed a UN Security Council resolution in the hopes of inserting language that would have allowed Washington to unilaterally interpret the level of compliance.)

Furthermore, if then-Senator Clinton’s desire was simply to push Saddam into complying with the inspection process, she wouldn’t have voted against the substitute Levin amendment, which would have also granted President Bush authority to use force, but only if Iraq defied subsequent UN demands regarding the inspections process. Instead, Clinton voted for a Republican-sponsored resolution to give Bush the authority to invade Iraq at the time and circumstances of his own choosing.

In fact, unfettered large-scale weapons inspections had been going on in Iraq for nearly four months at the time the Bush administration launched the March 2003 invasion. Despite the UN weapons inspectors having not found any evidence of WMDs or active WMD programs after months of searching, Clinton made clear that the United States should invade Iraq anyway. Indeed, she asserted that even though Saddam was in full compliance with the UN Security Council, he nevertheless needed to resign as president, leave the country, and allow U.S. troops to occupy the country. “The president gave Saddam Hussein one last chance to avoid war,” Clinton said in a statement, “and the world hopes that Saddam Hussein will finally hear this ultimatum, understand the severity of those words, and act accordingly.”

When Saddam refused to resign and the Bush administration launched the invasion, Clinton went on record calling for “unequivocal support” for Bush’s “firm leadership and decisive action” as “part of the ongoing Global War on Terrorism.” She insisted that Iraq was somehow still “in material breach of the relevant United Nations resolutions” and, despite the fact that weapons inspectors had produced evidence to the contrary, claimed the invasion was necessary to “neutralize Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.”

2. “Nearly everyone in Congress supported the invasion of Iraq, including most Democrats.”

While all but one congressional Democrat—Representative Barbara Lee of California—supported the authorization of force to fight al-Qaeda in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in 2001, a sizable majority of Democrats in Congress voted against the authorization to invade Iraq the following year.

There were 21 Senate Democrats—along with one Republican, Lincoln Chafee, and one independent, Jim Jeffords—who voted against the war resolution, while 126 of 209 House Democrats also voted against it. Bernie Sanders, then an independent House member who caucused with the Democrats, voted with the opposition. At the time, Sanders gave a floor speech disputing the administration’s claims about Saddam’s arsenal. He not only cautioned that both American and Iraqi casualties could rise unacceptably high, but also warned “about the precedent that a unilateral invasion of Iraq could establish in terms of international law and the role of the United Nations.”

Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, stood among the right-wing minority of Democrats in Washington.

The Democrats controlled the Senate at the time of the war authorization. Had they closed ranks and voted in opposition, the Bush administration would have been unable to launch the tragic invasion—at least not legally. Instead, Clinton and other pro-war Democrats chose to cross the aisle to side with the Republicans.

3. “Her vote was simply a mistake.”

While few Clinton supporters are still willing to argue her support for the war was a good thing, many try to minimize its significance by referring to it as simply a “mistake.” But while it may have been a terrible decision, it was neither an accident nor an aberration from Clinton’s generally hawkish worldview.

It would have been a “mistake” if Hillary Clinton had pushed the “aye” button when she meant to push the “nay” button. In fact, her decision—by her own admission—was quite conscious.

The October 2002 war resolution on Iraq wasn’t like the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution authorizing military force in Vietnam, which was quickly passed as an emergency request by President Lyndon Johnson when there was no time for reflection and debate. By contrast, at the time of the Iraq War authorization, there had been months of public debate on the matter. Clinton had plenty of time to investigate the administration’s claims that Iraq was a threat, as well as to consider the likely consequences of a U.S. invasion.

Also unlike the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which was disingenuously presented as an authorization to retaliate for an alleged attack on U.S. ships, members of Congress recognized that the Iraq resolution authorized a full-scale invasion of a sovereign nation and a subsequent military occupation. Clinton had met with scores of constituents, arms control analysts, and Middle East scholars who informed her that the war was unnecessary, illegal, and would likely end in disaster.

But she decided to support going to war anyway. She even rejected the advice of fellow Democratic senator Bob Graham that she read the full National Intelligence Estimate, which would have further challenged some of the Bush administration’s claims justifying the war.

It was not, therefore, simply a “mistake,” or a momentary lapse of judgment. Indeed, in her own words, she cast her vote “with conviction.”

As late as February 2007, Clinton herself refused to admit that her vote for the war resolution was a mistake. “If the most important thing to any of you is choosing someone who did not cast that vote or has said his vote was a mistake,” she said while campaigning for president, “then there are others to choose from.” She only began to acknowledge her regrets when she saw the polling numbers showing that a sizable majority of Democrats opposed the decision to go to war.

4. “She voted for the war because she felt it was politically necessary.”

First of all, voting for a devastating war in order to advance one’s political career isn’t a particularly strong rationale for why one shouldn’t share responsibility for the consequences—especially when that calculation proved disastrously wrong. Clinton’s vote to authorize the invasion was the single most important factor in convincing former supporters to back Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic primary, thereby costing her the nomination.

Nevertheless, it still raises questions regarding Hillary Clinton’s competence to become president.

To have believed that supporting the invasion would somehow be seen as a good thing would have meant that Clinton believed that the broad consensus of Middle East scholars who warned of a costly counterinsurgency war were wrong—and that the Bush administration’s insistence that U.S. occupation forces would be “treated as liberators” was credible.

After all, for the war to have been popular, there would have had to be few American casualties, and the administration’s claims about WMDs and Iraq’s ties to al-Qaeda would have had to be vindicated. Moreover, some sort of stable pro-Western democracy would have emerged in Iraq, and the invasion would have contributed to greater stability and democracy in the region.

If Clinton believed any of those things were possible, she wasn’t paying attention. Among the scores of reputable Middle East scholars with whom I discussed the prospects of a U.S. invasion in the months leading up to the vote, none of them believed that any of these things would come to pass. They were right.

Nor was pressure likely coming from Clinton’s own constituents. Only a minority of Democrats nationwide supported the invasion, and given that New York Democrats are more liberal than the national average, opposition was possibly even stronger in the state she purported to represent. Additionally, a majority of Americans polled said they would oppose going to war if Saddam allowed for “full and complete” weapons inspectors, which he in fact did.

Finally, the idea that Clinton felt obliged to support the war as a woman in order not to appear “weak” also appears groundless. Indeed, every female senator who voted against the war authorization was easily re-elected.

5. “She thought Iraq had ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and was supporting Al-Qaeda.”

This is excuse is problematic on a number levels.

Before the vote, UN inspectors, independent strategic analysts, and reputable arms control journals all challenged the Bush administration’s claims that Iraq had somehow rebuilt its chemical and biological weapons programs, had a nuclear weapons program, or was supporting al-Qaeda terrorists.

Virtually all of Iraq’s known stockpiles of chemical and biological agents had been accounted for, and the shelf life of the small amount of materiel that hadn’t been accounted for had long since expired. (Some discarded canisters from the 1980s were eventually found, but these weren’t operational.) There was no evidence that Iraq had any delivery systems for such weapons either, or could build them without being detected. In addition, a strict embargo against imports of any additional materials needed for the manufacture of WMDs—which had been in effect since 1990—made any claims that Iraq had offensive capability transparently false to anyone who cared to investigate the matter at that time.

Most of the alleged intelligence data made available to Congress prior to the war authorization vote has since been declassified. Most strategic analysts have found it transparently weak, based primarily on hearsay by Iraqi exiles of dubious credibility and conjecture by ideologically driven Bush administration officials.

Similarly, a detailed 1998 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency indicated that Iraq’s nuclear program appeared to have been completely dismantled by the mid-1990s, and a 2002 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate made no mention of any reconstituted nuclear development effort. So it’s doubtful Clinton actually had reason to believe her own claims that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program.

Additionally, there was no credible evidence whatsoever that the secular Baathist Iraqi regime had any ties to the hardline Islamist group al-Qaeda, yet Clinton distinguished herself as the only Senate Democrat to make such a claim. Indeed, a definitive report by the Department of Defense noted that not only did no such link exist, but that none could have even been reasonably suggested based on the evidence available at that time.

Moreover, even if Iraq really did have “weapons of mass destruction,” the war would have still been illegal, unnecessary, and catastrophic.

Roughly 30 countries (including the United States) have chemical, biological, or nuclear programs with weapons potential. The mere possession of these programs is not legitimate grounds for invasion, unless one is authorized by the United Nations Security Council—which the invasion of Iraq, pointedly, was not. If Clinton really thought Iraq’s alleged possession of those weapons justified her support for invading the country, then she was effectively saying the United States somehow has the right to invade dozens of other countries as well.

Similarly, even if Iraq had been one of those 30 countries—and remember, it was not—the threat of massive retaliation by Iraq’s neighbors and U.S. forces permanently stationed in the region provided a more than sufficient deterrent to Iraq using the weapons beyond its borders. A costly invasion and extended occupation were completely unnecessary.

Finally, the subsequent war and the rise of sectarianism, terrorism, Islamist extremism, and the other negative consequences of the invasion would have been just as bad even if the rationale weren’t bogus. American casualties could have actually been much higher, since WMDs would have likely been used against invading U.S. forces.

But here’s the kicker: Clinton stood by the war even after these claims were definitively debunked.

Even many months after the Bush administration itself acknowledged that Iraq had neither WMDs nor ties to Al-Qaeda, Clinton declared in a speech at George Washington University that her support for the authorization was still “the right vote” and one that “I stand by.” Similarly, in an interview on Larry King Live in April 2004, when asked about her vote despite the absence of WMDs or al-Qaeda ties, she acknowledged, “I don’t regret giving the president authority.”

No Excuses

The 2016 Democratic presidential campaign is coming down to a race between Hillary Clinton, who supported the Bush Doctrine and its call for invading countries that are no threat to us regardless of the consequences, and Bernie Sanders, who supported the broad consensus of Middle East scholars and others familiar with the region who recognized that such an invasion would be disastrous.

There’s no question that the United States is long overdue to elect a woman head of state. But electing Hillary Clinton—or anyone else who supported the invasion of Iraq—would be sending a dangerous message that reckless global militarism needn’t prevent someone from becoming president, even as the nominee of the more liberal of the two major parties.

It also raises this ominous scenario: If Clinton were elected president despite having voted to give President Bush the authority, based on false pretenses, to launch a war of aggression—in violation of the UN Charter, the Nuremberg Principles, and common sense—what would stop her from demanding that Congress give her the same authority?

"Saddam Hussein has repeatedly violated the UN's resolutions".. any utterance about Israeli total and repeated and shameful continued violation of dozens of UN's Resolutions? How intellectually honest and courageous statement against Iraq but not a peep about Israel! Shame on you and the rest of the genocidal liberals and the nutcases in the Republican party as well!

Posted by Mohammed Cohen on 2017-06-23 13:27:35

I think this omits part of her political calculus. In the aftermath of 9/11, New York was not liberal on these matters; the author forgets the glorification of police, 9/11 responders, and the fervor. New York was extremely hawkish against Islam. Hillary perceived that killing people of Muslim faith who speak Arabic language would likely improve her standing in New York politics. As those women and children died, Clinton's prestige could be enhanced. This was an opportunity for her to, of course, strengthen her path to the presidency, her real goal. The fact that hundreds of thousands of innocent people died from this meant little to her. Then she did it again 8 years later - consider her triumphal phrase "we came, we saw, he died" describing her tragic interventions in Libya.

Posted by manure2 on 2017-06-14 15:39:46

Sanders and Obama saw through the Bush administration's lies. I saw through it at the time. Why couldn't she?

Posted by Bill on 2016-10-03 18:32:59

No no no, the only reason we dislike Clinton is because we're sexists. Haven't you read the propaganda?

Posted by Bill on 2016-10-03 08:02:52

Can't disagree with you more. From her MSNBC interview on May 16th, 2016, she made it clear that there was no actually evidence. In fact, she states "there was a sense" that he had nukes. A sense? Since when is a "sense" in enabling act? More then that, clinton admitted that Bush wanted her support, and she gave it if he would allocated $12 billion dollars to the state of NY for the repairs after 9/11. So YES. A BIG YES, she was definitely at fault. She definitely voted for the war in Iraq, and she definitely spread lies so it could happen. FYI- in case you haven't been paying attention, the CIA actually advised Bush and the rest that there was no reason to believe Saddam had nukes or a nuke program, but hey, lets just forget that since it won't make Clinton innocent.

Posted by Shawn on 2016-05-20 15:54:24

Great article. Thank you for writing it, and to In These Times for publishing it. How can so many Americans be so stupid? Don't they realize that there is so much wrong with the world right now, such a threat of war, and all that (not) in mind they are voting for someone who voted for one of the worst wars and decisions in the history of their country and the world. Why can't they say to themselves enough is enough, I'm not going to vote for someone that put our country in a bad place, I'm going to vote for someone who cares about our country and the people who live in it. It's so clear that that person is Bernie Sanders. I don't understand the allure and fascination with Hillary Clinton. Just because she is a woman, just because she is Bill Clinton's wife, just because she is Barack Obama's former secretary of state, etc. - so what? What hurts the most is that I live in Canada and I can't cast my vote or lend my support to the Sanders campaign. What's even more frustrating is that people don't realize that the U.S. is the current empire. Whatever happens there, especially the election of its leader affects the whole world. Don't even get me started on Trump :)

Posted by Vito La Giorgia on 2016-02-22 18:48:23

Her only possible excuse is truth - it was all a political move.....She can cry about Bernie talking and saying the truth about her as if it is a smear BUT that doesn't change the truth

Posted by William Bednarz on 2016-02-08 17:43:08

No, y'see...SHE is SH*T!!!

Posted by Endgame on 2016-02-03 01:54:31

Well, it kind of IS her fault when she continues to stand by a decision she made as the right thing to do, even after all the evidence has been shown to be bullshit.

Now you might argue that she had no way of knowing it was bullshit at the time, but she had every opportunity to verify, or not, the intelligence she received, as I did, and likely many more unavailable to me, by virtue of her position. Yet I managed to make the correct assessment, as did millions of others, and many were quite vocal in the press about it. So there's no way she could avoid exposure to the fact that there was great controversy regarding the validity of much of the evidence presented by and to the Bush Administration.

Which means she either A)didn't recognize that the gravity of the situation required that she commit her support only if the intelligence was verified to an extra degree of certainty, and then make the extra effort required to achieve that certainty, or she B) DID research it, and then went ahead with supporting the invasion anyway, for unknown reasons. Either choice indicates she was willing to take us to war on the most meager of evidence, which is inexcusably bad judgement and morally suspect for someone in her position.

The only other rationale which presents itself as potential motivation for Hillary to vote against her conscience (assumed, for the sake of argument), would have been a desire on her part not to appear weak, conflicted or equivocating regarding national defense and the exercise of military power overseas. Which would be a calculated move made with a future candidacy for the White House in mind, another terrible judgement call.

I guess you could propose that she was presented with additional damning evidence, presumably classified, which we are not privvy to, which was crucial in convincing her, but that is not being claimed by anyone. So I am left to conclude that she either didn't care enough, or she did, but bit her tongue in order to bolster her credentials for the Top Job. Neither of which recommends her for the job, sad to say.

Posted by JohnnyD on 2016-02-02 03:21:03

Actually, that is a good excuse. She should have said, "I voted for the resolution to take action because Saddam Hussein has repeatedly violated the UN's resolutions and there is evidence indicating that he has not ceased the manufacture of chemical weapons." It's not her fault that the intelligence that she acted upon was sh*t.